The universal right of every human being on earth is the right to life. It is also the right to live healthy and happy lives, free from discrimination and prejudice of any kind. The right not to live in fear - brought about by other peoples ignorance and intolerance. The right to defend their right to life, if their own civil liberties are being threatened. The right to walk down any street without the fear of being targeted or discriminated against. 

The right to breathe the same air and to drink the same water - water which should be free from contamination, as other more well-off people drink and enjoy. The right not to live in abject poverty, shanty towns, or run down homes, but to have a descent living, for every human being, not just for a select few who claim all of the world’s resources leaving nothing but the dregs for the rest.

The right not to suffer the inhumanity of hunger and famine, while the rest of the world gorges itself on food that the hungry can only dream about. The right to live in peace and to have happy, productive lives in which every single human being on the planet has a stake and a say. The right not to put up with intolerance or hatred but to meet it head on, and challenge it wherever it arises.

These should be the universal rights of every single human being on the planet. Yet human rights are brushed aside as if they are nothing. People are trampled upon, put upon, despised, hated, and have poverty forced upon them, with no hope of escape. They are chased to an inch of their lives if they happen to walk down the wrong street or district. Chased because they are hated, the ‘wrong color’, look different in some way, treated lower than animals, despised - with their human rights crushed time and again.

It also should be the universal right of every human being to an education, to learn about their fellow man who shares the planet with them. Because it is only through education that future generations will be able to break free from the stifling bonds of prejudice and fear of others, simply because of race, colour, creed or gender.

These should be be ingrained within the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’, but this ‘declaration’ is very rarely followed to the letter and is merely empty words upon a piece of paper. They mean nothing to the countless millions who are suffering and continue to suffer in poverty and in fear of their very lives.

It is only when the human race, as a whole, turns as one from the bonds of hatred and the despising of others - because of what they may have read or heard, that feeds their hatred - that the world will change for the better. It is only then that the ‘Human Rights Charter will be followed to the letter. Until then, people will continue to live in poverty and fear, controlled by those whose wish is too keep the ‘status quo’ the way it has always been.

The type of world that the majority of people have striven for, and continue to strive for, for years, is still way out of reach, as people continue on with the enslavement of others. When the riches and resources of the world are shared out equally between the many, and not between the few as it is now, only then will there be world peace on a scale that has never been seen before.

Until that day arrives however, people will continue to hurt, maim and kill others, because of greed, ignorance, prejudice and hatred - simply because of the way other people may look or act. Human life means nothing now - and is cheap. Until human beings get that respect for human life - all human life - back, then it is always going to be the way it has always been.